User blog comment:Cpt Crimson/DmC sales way lower than dmc4's/@comment-2068382-20130207064908/@comment-134861-20130302040114

The camera is annoying in past games, sure, but it doesn't flip around multiple times while you're going in another direction.

It's a strawman if it's not part of the argument you're actually responding to. Whether or not other people have said it, it's not what you're responding to, it's irrelevant.

You can attack monsters that are just barely on your screen, yes. If they are fully off screen, though, the whip just swings no matter how close you are.

Limbo: I wasn't talking about just being aware that humans have existed, I'm talking about getting the feeling that Limbo is actually a place. It's not...no one lives there, all it comes off as is a living obstacle. It's not a "setting", it's a "thing". The human shades never have any significant impact on anything, either, they're just kind of...there. Temen-ni-gru, on the other hand, actually gives off the feeling that it was built as a temple to evil where humans practiced inconceivable vice (opera house being more like a strip club, etc.), rather than just something there to be struggled through. That's immersion. I'm in a place, it has history, rather than just being in an...environment.

No, DMC1 and DMC3 did not need to "tack on content", and if we're really talking about that then we could talk about how many times various levels make you go in circles in DmC, and how so many of the levels are indistinguishable from others. DMC3 very clearly had the backtracking sections to show how the tower has completely changed and come alive - the effects of the rooms were almost all changed up. DMC1 did similar. DMC4 did not do this to any satisfactory level, and I did not argue on that.

"It's there to stop players from finding one tactic and sticking to it." - ....that could be believable, if the movesets for the weapons were unique, or the official guide itself didn't tell you to find one tactic and stick to it for most of these enemies. Other games did not reward you for sticking to your usual combos even against normal enemies, so it doesn't say anything good about DmC's combat system that it's required there. Like I said, though, there's a right way to do such limitations, and it's with stuff like the Witch or the Shadow.

The DMC series is within the subset of stylish action, as is Dante's inferno, Castlevania, or several other games. It's antithetical to such a game to force, reward, or really just encourage players to use the same moves over and over. DmC rewarded the hell out of me for using the same combos on color-coded enemies, Witches, Dreamrunners, Mundus, or Vergil, even on DMD. It punished me for trying to mix up my style. The guide itself specifically recommends doing a certain action over and over for these bosses. There are certain games where such a game design is correct, like Zelda: each enemy is a puzzle to solve, and the challenge comes from reading the clues and dealing with multiple different puzzles at once. Giving me multiple Dreamrunners, though, doesn't change my normal, amateur playstyle at all - it just makes the game take longer, and punishes me for being a little slow or a little fast to complete the pattern.

Agni & Rudra: It's not a strawman if I misunderstand your point, only if I'm attacking stuff irrelevant to the discussion, dood. As for the element thing...Agni and Rudra were resistant to their elements, the issue is that you're using two different elements at the same time. It's like the crux of that battle, dealing with two opposing forces. That...isn't really solved in any way with the color-coded enemies, because guess what you use to defeat them? Their own element.

Control: I'm not seeing any relevance to DmC, here. You can't do anything in a general mechanics sense that you can't do in DMC4, that's the whole point of the Devil Bringer (which even had puzzles where the grip points would move around or cause you to hit spikes, rather than you just whiff it and fall if you're unable to grab the target). Yes, there are cutscenes where, per the definition of cutscene, the character does something and you don't have control of their actions. You're gonna have to provide a specific example of what you mean by this that DmC has and the previous games did not, because you're not making any sense here.

I'm not arguing the quality of the game based on sales. I'm arguing that excusing DmC's faults as "an attempt to reach out to new fans" is a failure of an argument, because DmC quantifiably did not reach out to new fans on any level comparable to the past games. If it's differences are due to that reason, then it's differences are due to failure. The differences should be argued based on whether it made the game good or not, not whether it tried to be more accessible or was marketed differently or any such thing (this is a strawman, since you've not made those claims).

Bugs: I've catalogued several major bugs on the Bloody Palace page, for each boss. They were bad enough that it was impossible at that time to advance past Mundus' Spawn. I've seen several reports of the Mundus fight also being bugged, as well as reports of graphical bugs in the game itself - for example, the Arbiter Jump Canceling bug, which last I saw has not been fixed.

Unoriginal: both, really. I mean, don't get me wrong, if I was designing the game that's exactly what I'd do, because I'm obsessed with having everything neat and tidy. That's why I'm not designing the game, though, since it makes it a bit boring. The effects for each weapon's version of a combo are overall pretty much the same, as well, with slight variations that still make the weapon you're currently using largely interchangeable, as compared to past games. For that matter, using the D-pad for cycling weapons, especially the guns, slows down the flow a good bit in my experience.

In regards to DMC2, no, I don't know exactly how it reacted, but by the time DMC3 came out opinion was fairly cemented. In regards to DMC4, pretty much every existing fan that I read the posts of criticized the game, and continues to. It was really only the new guys who were ecstatic about it,, and they continue to think badly of it. I personally liked it, although I can admit that DMC3 was in many ways better. DMC1, I think, was even better than DMC3 at setting up an environment and mood, while DMC3 had the nigh-perfect combat system. DMC3, from what I saw, never had a bad word from anybody until now, in these blogs.

Facts: If you're arguing with me, respond to what I'm saying. I'm not wasting your time by filling these responses with complaints about people not even in the argument. I'm pointing out specific flaws that I saw in this game. It's pretty rude to be complaining about an irrelevant argument while allegedly arguing with someone else.

personal opinion: Not really. We've had the "warped version of reality" in each game already. DMC1 had the Netherworld, DMC2 had the final levels, DMC3 had the activated tower and Hell, and DMC4 had Dante's version of the levels and the Savior (done poorly, absolutely). Limbo is not a new aesthetic, as we saw the same basic thing as far back as DMC1, it's just a refinement and expansion of it. For good or bad, (I personally don't like it, as it bored the heck out of me by the time I got done with Bob) it means there's a lack of variety to the environments, compared to past games (possibly not so much DMC3, though, since that only had slightly more variety). Now, if Limbo had reacted to the different locations dfferently, like Lilith's nightclub was...I dunno, constantly undulating everywhere' and you felt like you were having to dance to get through it, that would have been awesome. Look at the Keyholes in Kingdom Hearts Re:coded, or something. However, what Limbo amounted to in every level was "floating skyslands, use the Ophion to get from place to place". The entrance to Poison and Bob's levels were perhaps the only really outstanding uses of Limbo, I'd have to say (sure, that's personal thing)

Graphics: The graphics in DmC run at a slower framerate than previous games, and there is ample reports of textures not loading, frequently. Past games did not have those problems to a noticeable level, to my knowledge.

Reboot of the story explains story details. It is completely irrelevant to the mechanics of the system being poorly designed or buggy, dood, especially considering how many of their mechanics (again, virtually everything but their flavor of Limbo) being a redeco of mechanics from DMC4.

Story: As I said, the books and manga filled in that knowledge gap basically completely, and there's not a whole lot to say. DMC3 is the first point in that story where the action was, well, actiony. Before that there wasn't a whole lot of stuff to play, that's the point, and really, DMC3 was a rough enough fit considering the prologue to DMC1 as it was. Sticking a game in for game's sake isn't a recipe for success if you don't have a way to make it meaningful and fun. As for Nero, they explained that already, just not in English.

Anyway: don't get the feeling that I hate DmC. I don't, it's the first DMC game that I have completely completed and not gotten stuck. It's just....when I beat the final boss on the hardest difficulty and I do it by just doing the same thing over and over, I feel bored. DmC has some absolutely brilliant bits, like Bob Barbas, the ARG, and Devil's Dalliance, but it also has a good bit of stinkers that just make me frustrated and bored.